I have...

... the coolest friends EVER.

I'm full of birthday cake and loaded down with presents and my ribs hurt from laughing at completely inappropriate things, so I'm going to go to bed.

Huzzah!

Grandma got to go home from the scummy skilled nursing facility yesterday! She graduated rehab with flying colors and her fractures are healed and she can walk. I haven't talked to her yet (the phone company hasn't yet switched her phone back to her house) but I'm sure she is turning cartwheels in spirit to be HOME.

I swear...

... that I'm still alive, that I am knitting, that there are Things going on in my life other than work.

I've just been feeling a little antisocial and jealously guarding my alone time and enjoying my new mp3 player.

I got a new cousin Christmas Eve, and this next year I'm going to get one more by marriage and another by birth, so it's good to watch the clan get bigger. Just a little sad to think that we're already on two continents and we may not ever have everybody together again.

Actually did Dad's family Christmas this year, which was highly uncomfortable in a lot of ways but not bad in others. Definitely a different tone, but I saw people I hadn't seen in ages.

I miss everyone in my little virtual world; I think of you often (especially YOU, Gina!) and maybe someday I'll feel more like interacting in the blogosphere and in RL. In the meantime, though, as of this week I'm no longer working every night, so I've been taking long, long, long walks every time it's not cold. It's not the same, but it's a start, and somewhere deep inside my cold bones an echo reverberates: "I remember this."

I hope 2007 is a year of being true to myself moreso than 2006, which has, I'm not going to lie, taken a toll on me. It took a year or so to feel human again the last time I made a drastic move to a new city, however, and I'm getting older and crankier and more set in my routine, so I'm optimistic that this is normal and this too shall pass.

For you locals, I'll let you know as soon as I know my schedule for teaching knitting classes.

Keep us in your thoughts, everyone . . .